Language and Vulnerability-A Lacanian Analysis of Respect Laurie Laufer, Beatriz Santos

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Laurie Laufer, Beatriz Santos. Language and Vulnerability-A Lacanian Analysis of Respect. Frontiers in , Frontiers, 2017, 8, ￿10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02279￿. ￿hal-02530886￿

HAL Id: hal-02530886 https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02530886 Submitted on 3 Apr 2020

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Language and Vulnerability – A Lacanian Analysis of Respect

1 Laurie Laufer1, Beatriz Santos2*,

2 1Department of Psychoanalytic Studies, Center for Research in , Medicine and Society 3 (CRPMS), Paris Diderot University, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, France 4 2Department of Psychoanalytic Studies, Center for Research in Psychoanalysis, Medicine and Society 5 (CRPMS), Paris Diderot University, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, France

6 * Correspondence: 7 Corresponding Author 8 [email protected]

9 Keywords: Language1, Vulnerability2, Symptom3, Recognition4, Clinical Practice5.

10 Abstract

11 Lacan's original approach to language expands the reaches of psychoanalysis. Not limited to a set of 12 technical instructions that guide “treatments of the soul”, lacanian psychoanalysis can be seen as a 13 theoretical toolbox whose utility is multidisciplinary. This paper contends that, by establishing a 14 connection between (i) the idea that subjects are produced by language and bear the mark of the 15 unconscious; and (ii) an approach to the production of symptoms that acknowledges the importance 16 of their sense, lacanian theories enlighten contemporary discussions on vulnerability. We claim that 17 Lacan's description of psychoanalysis as an apparatus that respects the person and (foremost) their 18 symptoms generates evidence of the existence of a kind of recognition that takes into account the 19 vulnerability of a given subject without assigning them to a fixed position of victim.

20 1 Introduction

21 By referring to contemporary French psychoanalysts interested in the thematics of symptoms, 22 the present work examines how psychoanalytical theories on the relationship between language and 23 subjectivity allow for a broader understanding of the concept of vulnerability. A lacanian perspective 24 on respect and its importance to the development of psychoanalytical treatment stems from this 25 discussion on vulnerability.

26 2 Article type : Original Research

27 3 Manuscript

28 Language and Reality

29 In Clarice Lispector's The passion according to G.H., at the end of an introspective quest that 30 culminates in a Kafkaesque encounter with a cockroach, the main character finally understands what 31 language is: “Reality is the raw material, language is the way I go in search of it - and the way I do 32 not find it.”i. G.H. is a Brazilian middle-class woman who sets out to simply clean a room in her Language and Vulnerability

33 house but finds herself exploring the very origins of human communication. In doing so, she seems 34 to comprehend language as that which allows one to seize the raw material that comes from an 35 external reality (as opposed to psychic reality, in Freud's definition). In other words, G.H is able to 36 experience the discontinuity between the available sensory information (the sense data) and what is 37 captured and organized by our psychic apparatus. G.H's experience allows her to understand that this 38 capture cannot happen without language.

39 As human beings, our very subjectivity is defined by language. As Emile Benveniste puts it, a 40 separation between man on one side and the use of language on the other is not possible: even though 41 we are inclined to imagine a primordial time when a man discovered another one and between the 42 two of them language was worked out little by little, this is not what happened:

43 “We can never get back to man separated from language and we shall never see him inventing 44 it. We shall never get back to man reduced to himself and exercising his wits to conceive of 45 the existence of another. It is a speaking man whom we find in the world, a man speaking to 46 another man, and language provides the very definition of manii.”

47 Benveniste insists on the idea that language is much more than an instrument that allows men 48 and women to communicate. The main characteristics that defines language – its immaterial nature, 49 its symbolic functioning, its articulated arrangement and the fact that it has content – set it apart from 50 any instrument created by man: “to speak of an instrument is to put man and nature in opposition. 51 The pick, the arrow, and the wheel are not in nature. They are fabrications. Language is in the nature 52 of man, and he did not fabricate it” (Benveniste 1963).

53 This understanding of language as a given that simultaneously precedes and produces the 54 subject proposed by Benveniste is also a main point in Lacan's description of human beings as 55 subjects of language that are subjects to language. Throughout his work, Lacan will develop the 56 notion of a subject who is able to talk because he/she is talked - that is, because he/she is inscribed in 57 language as a preexisting structure. This is a fundamental shift in the understanding of the 58 relationship between human beings and language : once seen as the actor responsible for the 59 performing of acts of speech, the subject becomes, in lacanian theory, the product of such acts.

60 In “Position of the Unconscious”, Lacan develops this idea of a subject subordinated to 61 language through the affirmation that “the effect of language is to introduce the cause into the 62 subject”iii. For Lacan, the subject is not what he imagines himself to be. We produce an image – an Language and Vulnerability

63 imaginary or specular illusion – of ourselves that protects us against the chaotic movement of our 64 drives. This organized image, known as ego, differs from the subject: the lacanian subject is the 65 subject of the unconscious, and is produced by the signifiers of language. The effect of language over 66 the subject thus means that “he ([the subject] is not the cause of himself; he bears within himself the 67 worm of the cause that splits him. For his cause is the signifier, without which there would be no 68 subject in the real. But this subject is what the signifier represents, and the latter cannot represent 69 anything except to another signifier: to which the subject who listens is thus reduced.”(Lacan, 1960)

70 The signifier allows the subject to occupy a place among all other beings, but does not 71 encompass the totality of what a subject is. The subject is what the signifier represents; as the famous 72 aphorism goes, the signifier is characterized by the fact that it represents a subject to another signifier 73 (and to another, and to another, in an endless signifying chain, as Lacan will describe it).

74 The meaning of symptoms

75 This understanding of the role played by language in the very constitution of a subject has 76 important implications for the clinical work derived from lacanian theory. One of them is the 77 appreciation of the importance of symptoms to the analytical cure. In his first Seminar, Lacan posits 78 that the symptom initially appears to us as “a trace which will continue not to be understood (qui 79 restera toujours incomprise) until the analysis has got quite a long way and we have discovered its 80 meaning (son sens) ”. This means that, in psychoanalytical theory, the symptom is not simply seen as 81 a manifestation associated to a disease. It is not the indication of a disturbance in the (healthy) 82 condition of a person. Rather, it should be understood as a formation of the unconscious that the 83 analyst should not strive to quickly extinguish since it was carefully (albeit unconsciously) produced 84 by the subject – not unlikely a work of art.

85 We think of Freud's comparison of symptoms to cultural outputs, and to outputs produced by 86 artists. In 1917, for instance, he mentions the importance of distinguishing the symptoms from the 87 disease of his neurotic patients, and reminds us “that doing away with the symptoms is not 88 necessarily curing the disease. Of course, the only tangible thing left over after the removal of the 89 symptoms is the capacity to build new symptoms”iv. This creative capacity may translate into the 90 artist's ability of “turning away from reality” and transferring interests and to the elaboration of 91 imaginary wishes. It also works as evidence that symptoms are not to be simply eradicated, but rather 92 taken as an indication that there is work to be done. It is in this sense that Lacan describes the Language and Vulnerability

93 symptom as a trace in his early works: as a mark left by the presence of something that once was at a 94 given place, like footsteps that reveal that someone has stood at a given spot.

95 What interests us regarding this way of looking at the symptom is the consequences to our 96 approach of the psychoanalytical treatment. What does it mean, to treat someone, without getting rid 97 of the symptom but focusing on its meaning instead?

98 French psychoanalyst Sidi Askofaré examines this matter on an article about what he sees as 99 “the revolution of symptom”v– that is, as the action (by the symptom) of going round in an orbit. The 100 symptom is found at the very beginning of a treatment as the reason why one seeks consultation with 101 an analyst. It is also there at the very end of the analysis, albeit transformed. The trajectory it 102 describes is not one of mere repetition nor of an eternal recurrence of events, but rather a revolution 103 that conjoins a return to and a metamorphosis of events. In the unpublished Seminar from 1976, 104 L’insu que sait de l’une-bévue s’aile à mourre, Lacan wonders if, in the end, it would be possible to 105 understand psychoanalysis as synonym to identifying with one's symptom. Not understanding the 106 meaning of the symptom or having it revealed by the analyst, but, as Askofaré puts it, taking 107 ownership of the meaning of this symptom: “what is expected from the act of the analyst is that it 108 brings the analysant to take ownership of (assumer) the meaning (sexual, phallic or castration) of his 109 symptoms”.

110 Askofaré insists on the fact that this ability to assume or undertake the meaning of a symptom 111 radically differs from the mere understanding or treatment of said symptom. In analysis, what 112 happens to a subject is closer to an ethical experience that Lacan associates with the idea of respect.

113 Respect, Recognition, Vulnerability

114 In his very first Seminar, from 1953 to 1954, Lacan studies Freud's articles about 115 psychoanalytical technique. In a lesson concerning the concepts of resistance and defenses, he 116 examines the criticism regarding Freud's supposed “authoritarianism” in relation to his patients – 117 some of Lacan's students describe Freud's handling of the resistance as an act of conquering said 118 resistances. Consequently, Freud is seen by these students as someone who is moved by a “strong 119 will for domination”.

120 But Lacan does not agree with his students' interpretation of Freud's technique. He posits that 121 “if anything constitutes the originality of the analytic treatment, it is rather to have perceived at the Language and Vulnerability

122 beginning, right from the start, the problematical relation of the subject to himself. The real find, the 123 discovery, in the sense I explained to you at the beginning of the year, is to have conjoined this 124 relation with the meaning of the symptomsvi.” (Lacan 1953-1954). This means that, rather than acting 125 dominantly, the psychoanalyst works from a position of a certain vulnerability.

126 Indeed, when Lacan mentions “the problematical relation of the subject to himself”, he is 127 referring to the Freudian notion of Nebenmensch, “the fellow human being”. In Freud's work, the 128 (helpful) person capable of removing the distress of the child through a “specific action” also creates 129 – via the same action – dependency and vulnerability. According to Freud,

130 “Let us suppose that the object which furnishes the perception resembles the subject— a 131 fellow human-being (nebenmensch). If so, the theoretical interest taken in it is also explained 132 by the fact that such an object was simultaneously the subject’s first satisfying object and 133 further his first hostile object, as well as his sole helping power. For this reason it is in relation 134 to a fellow human-being that a human being learns to recognizevii”(Freud, 1895).

135 In other words, it is by being vulnerable and by being exposed to the power and the hostility 136 of another fellow human being that one develops his or her abilities of recognition. A moment of 137 crisis and a critical environment are indeed the very conditions to the development of human's 138 capacity to recognize others. This has a technical consequence that shall bring us back to the lacanian 139 definition of the analyst as someone who gives up knowledge in the same way he/she gives up of 140 his/her ideals.

141 In fact, Freud described in 1890 a menacing aspect inherent to all situations where help is 142 involvedviii. Since the forces that work toward helping a subject necessarily impact the “autocratic 143 nature of the personalities of the subjects”, a common reaction in patients is to avoid asking for help 144 of any kind (psychological, medical or on a social context). The very idea of being helped elicits 145 defenses. Consequently, the efficacy of psychoanalytical practice must rely on the fact that it differs 146 from a psychological aid. It has to avoid what we could describe, from a lacanian perspective, as the 147 imaginary trap (le piège imaginaire) of intersubjectivity. Rather, it should adhere to an unconditional 148 recognition of the symptom of the subject, as well as of the “problematical relationship of the subject 149 to himself” that the symptom imposes.

150 This unconditional recognition means questioning one's relationship to knowledge. The 151 analyst behaves as a nebenmensch, a fellow human who cannot know what the analysant needs. One Language and Vulnerability

152 cannot, as an analyst, assume a position where prescribing attitudes or behaviors is a possibility. 153 Rather, one must give up one's knowledge regarding his/her patients and the illusion of power that 154 comes with it. By doing so, we rend ourselves more vulnerable. But we also move closer to the 155 meaning of the symptoms.

156 We understand that this is the only way to keep psychoanalysis from either being dissolved 157 into some sort of sentimental psychologisation that fails to take into account the submission to 158 language described by Lacan; or into a medical way of thinking that tries to answer to normative 159 ideals regarding treatments. One could this describe this position concerning psychoanalysis as a 160 certain style, neither intimate, nor extimate (as Lacan puts it), but proximate. As a practice, 161 psychoanalysis remains vulnerable, situated between two spots, fragile.

162 In other words, the originality of the analytic treatment is to oppose something very simple to 163 both an inquisitive style of the analysis of resistances and the mere eradication of symptoms: 164 respect for the human being and for his or her symptoms. As Lacan puts it:

165 “It is the subject's refusal of this meaning [of the symptom] that poses a problem for him. This 166 meaning must not be revealed to him, it must be assumed by him. In this respect, 167 psychoanalysis is a technique which respects the person – in the sense in which we 168 understand it today, having realized that it had its price – not only respects it, but cannot 169 function without respecting it” ix 170 From this perspective, respect means an idea of care for the other or for oneself that unties 171 itself from a monolithic representation of who this other or this self should be. The lacanian 172 understanding of respect allows for an idea of recognition that relies on a more variable (or less 173 fixed) conception of the self.

174 These theoretical developments invite us to rethink what is at stake in the relationship 175 between recognition and vulnerability. French psychoanalyst Jean Allouch argues that the 176 psychoanalyst establishes a relationship to “variety as such”(le divers comme tel) which implies 177 refraining from assigning a subject to a predefined clinical entity – or to a predefined name. In 178 Allouch's words, this means that “oriented by variety, the psychoanalyst is bond to welcome anyone, 179 and to do so by restraining from any identificatory action or ”x. This means assuming a 180 delicate position where one is perpetually thinking the subject without references to a knowledge of 181 preexisting categories. And this ability to recognize variety without reducing it to rigid categories 182 stems from this respectful attitude towards language, in the sense suggested by Lacan. Language and Vulnerability

183

184 4 Conflict of Interest

185 The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial 186 relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

187 5 Author Contributions

188 LL and BS are equal contributors to this paper (co-first authors). All authors read and approved the 189 final manuscript.

190 6 References

191 Allouch, J. (2014). Fragilités de l'analyse. Critique, 800-801,(1), 19-31. 192 Askofaré, S. (2005). La révolution du symptôme. Psychanalyse, no 4,(3), 31-40. 193 Benveniste, E. (1963) 1973. “Subjectivity in Language”, in Problems in General Linguistics, 194 translated by Mary Elizabeth Meek ed. University Miami Press, 223-230 195 Freud, S. (1890) 1942 “Psychical (or Mental) Treatment” in The Standard Edition of the Complete 196 Psychological Works of , Volume VII (1901-1905), translated by , ed. 197 Hogarth Press, 281-302 198 ______(1895)1966 “Project for a scientific psychology” in The Standard Edition of the Complete 199 Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume I (1886-1889), translated by James Strachey, ed. 200 Hogarth Press, 283-295 201 Lacan, J. (1953-1954) Freud's papers on technique, 1953-1954. translated by John Forrester. ed WW 202 Norton & Company, 1988 203 ______(1960) 2006. “Position of the Unconscious”, in Ecrits, translated by Bruce Fink, ed. W.W. 204 Norton and Company, 703-722. 205 Lispector, C. (1964) 1988. The Passion According to G.H., translated by Ronald W. Sousa ed. 206 University of Minnesota

207 Footnotes i Lispector, C. (1964) 1988. The Passion According to G.H., translated by Ronald W. Sousa ed. University of Minnesota ii Benveniste, E. (1963) 1973. “Subjectivity in Language”, in Problems in General Linguistics, translated by Mary Elizabeth Meek ed. University Miami Press, 223-230 iii Lacan, J. (1960) 2006. “Position of the Unconscious”, in Ecrits, translated by Bruce Fink, ed. W.W. Norton and Company, 703-722. iv Freud, S. (1890) 1942 “Psychical (or Mental) Treatment” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume VII (1901-1905), translated by James Strachey, ed. Hogarth Press, 281-302 v Askofaré, S. (2005). La révolution du symptôme. Psychanalyse, no 4,(3), 31-40. vi Lacan, Jacques (1953-1954) Freud's papers on technique, 1953-1954. translated by John Forrester. ed WW Norton & Company, 1988 vii Freud, Sigmund (1895)1966 “Project for a scientific psychology” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume I (1886-1889), translated by James Strachey, ed. Hogarth Press, 283- 295 viiiFreud, S. (1890). op. cit. ix Lacan, J. (1953-1954). op. cit. x Allouch, J. (2014). Fragilités de l'analyse. Critique, 800-801,(1), 19-31.